How does Steam work?

Steam is a free piece of software from Valve that's part DRM, part games library and part gaming community. Not sure how it works? Get the answers here. read more

Steam touts itself as the ultimate online game platform, where users can download from a selection of more than 1,100 games for the PC and Mac. Developed by Valve Corporation, Steam allows you to purchase games, keep them organized, chat with other gamers and stay up to date on the latest happenings in the game industry. read more

Steam is an infrastructure for distributing and managing the installation and use of games. It manages user identity information, and it has a (minor) role in providing multiplayer functionality. But it is not a game engine, graphics API, or sandbox in which a game runs. When Steam runs on Linux, that doesn't make Steam applications run on GNU/Linux. read more